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by Parul Bakhshi, Steve Taff, Jean-Francois Trani, & Ian Kaplan

Warnings that Education has been “in crisis” and in need of a “paradigm shift” have been a constant over the past 50 years.  stated that learning needs to extend beyond childhood and youth and be a lifelong process. A quarter of a century later, the  affirmed that lifelong learning should be based on four pillars of education: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be. To support this vision, UNESCO spearheaded the  initiative with six distinct goals conceived to shape learning around the world in 2000.

These value-oriented discussions, however, have obscured a very different reality. Over the past 50 years, there has been an exponential acceleration of widening global inequalities. Simultaneously, economic and social discrimination, disparities in access to resources and an increase in disasters brought forth by climate chaos, have been compounded by the entrenchment of protracted conflicts and the coming to power of authoritarian and nationalist world leaders. The complex nexus of these factors has pushed the term “crisis” into a new realm of fear and uncertainty.

Underlying these overt crises has been a sustained undercurrent of systems and policies that have subtly, but surely laid and solidified the foundations of where we are today. As we envision the endeavour of “learning to become”, it is fitting to take a long, hard look at where we stand. Although language around inclusion and equity has been omnipresent, in some form, in educational debates and discourses, since at least 2000 and the setting of the Millennium Development Goals, it is undeniable that a push towards gauging success through standardisation has predominated, legitimising education outcomes largely on test scores and grades. This perspective has been justified by arguments of practicality and real-world readiness, where employment generation, and the production of an economically productive citizenry, constitute the ultimate goals of education. Shunted aside by a narrow focus on economic and market-driven goals, important discourses around other values of education have become mostly relegated to academic papers, policy documents and international conferences.

The value of “inclusion” is an exemplar of the tension between claimed ideals and tangible programs. The fact that Education should be for All may seem like an undisputable statement. However, if we compare the aspirations of the 1994 , which called for all children with disabilities to have access to mainstream schools, with the reality that a majority of these children remain excluded (), it seems these efforts were not optimised in earnest. To date, inclusive education has remained synonymous with education of children with “special needs” and has been approached through a limited vision of access-retention-completion. Recently, there has been some push to re-connect the values of education with a more holistic understanding of quality of education, as well as to work towards greater equity in learning. But perceptible (“measurable”) changes have been too few and far between.

We must reframe the debates around the profound disconnect that exists between the values that should sustain education, espoused in the realms of the politic, and the way we view progress and success in education systems. Unfortunately, values of inclusion and equity directly challenge the neo-liberal agenda that education systems have been increasingly designed to support. The network of treaties, conventions and policies on the one hand, and politically-gated pressures around school resources, teacher accountability and student progress on the other, have been constructed to ensure that the contradiction between what is being said and done, does not become too salient. To operate the disconnect, the teeth were removed from the social and solidaric values that should sustain education thinking and implementation; fundamental ideals were thus re-purposed to fit a limited set of standardized tools that determine accountability. Consequently, “inclusion” is now often gauged through marginalised children’s physical access to schools, their retention through a few classes, or access to vocational trainings. Children with disabilities profoundly challenge the process of viewing success only through standardised tests and obligate us to clarify the contradictions under which we operate. It stands that majority of countries oscillate between inclusive education and special needs education without addressing critical questions surrounding education: What is its role in helping all persons become who they can be? What do our learning systems say about us?

2020 has brought COVID-19 to the world, prompting a global reflection on where we go from here. The pandemic has also exposed some of the failures of existing socio-economic and political systems, not just in low-income countries, but also wealthier nations like the United States which has influenced the development agenda and global institutions which drive it, through direct and indirect funding and political leverage. The disease is also a painful, but powerful reminder of our interconnectivity and the need to think and act globally to counter threats, such as climate chaos, which if not met, threaten our very existence.

The need for a “paradigm shift”, is an urgent call for integrity and coherence. To achieve this, we must first profoundly scrutinize what type of education is required to face the new challenges: not just critical thinking and self-advocacy, but also resilience, compassion and solidarity. Second, it is imperative to realise that our “inclusive values” have become rhetorical phrases that pacify critiques of the system, rather than acting as fundamental principles that sustain decision making and meaningful change. Third, we need to link our values closely to mechanisms of accountability. Defining who we will become, we cannot surrender in the face of the fact that the ethical commitment and adherence to values of inclusion and equity must, and will, pose a direct challenge to the neo-liberal agenda underlying all our systems. A truly inclusive education characterised by authentic outcomes and accountability mechanisms can facilitate the becoming of persons who can achieve wellbeing and face crucial global challenges alongside others.